“Everybody calm down. It’s still the Key. Doj, study it. Carefully. I don’t want all the years and all the crap we went through to go to waste now. What?” Weapons had begun to appear.
“Look who’s here,” Swan said. “Where did those guys come from?”
Slink and his band had arrived. I exchanged looks with Slink. He shrugged. “Gave us the slip.”
“I’m not surprised. We screwed up here. He knew somebody was out there.” Suruvhija still had the red scarf draped over her shoulder. “Folks, we need to get traveling. We want to get across the bridge at Ghoja before the Protector starts looking for us.” From the beginning I had pretended that getting across that bridge would give us a running chance.
I told Slink, “You guys did a great job at Semchi.”
“Could’ve been better. If I’d thought about it, I’d’ve waited till they damaged the Bhodi Tree. Then we’d have been heroes instead of just bandits.”
I shrugged. “Next time. Swan, tell that goat we’re going to eat it if it don’t start cooperating.”
“You promise?”
“I promise we’ll get some real food when we get to Jai-cur.”
55
Our crossing at Ghoja was another grand anticlimax. We all worked ourselves into a state of nerves before we reached the bottleneck. I sent Slink forward to scout and did not believe a word, emotionally, when he reported the only attention being paid anyone went to those few travelers who argued about paying a two-copper pais toll for use of the bridge. These tightwads were commended to the old ford downstream from the bridge. A ford that was impassable because this was the rainy season. Traffic was heavy. The soldiers assigned to watch the bridge were too busy loafing and playing cards to harass wayfarers.
Some part of me was determined to expect the worst.
Ghoja had grown into a small town serving those who traveled the Rock Road, which was one of the Black Company’s lasting legacies. The Captain had had the highway paved from Taglios to Jaicur during his preparations for invading the Shadowlands. Prisoners of war had provided the labor. More recently, Mogaba had used convicts to extend the road southwestward, adding tributaries, to connect the cities and territories newly taken under Taglian protection.
Once we were safely over the Main, I began to ponder our next steps. I gathered everyone. “Is there any way we could forge a rescript ordering the garrison here to arrest Narayan if he crosses the bridge?”
Doj told me, “You’re too optimistic. If he’s going south, he’s already ahead of us.”
Swan added, “Not to mention that if he fell into the Protector’s hands, she’d find out everything he knows about you.”
“The voice of an expert heard.”
“I didn’t take the job voluntarily.”
“All right. She could, yes. He knows where we’re headed. And why. And that we have the Key. But what does he know about the other bunch? If he doesn’t get caught, won’t he try to intercept them so he can do something about getting the Daughter of Night away from them?”
No one found any cause to disagree.
“I suggest we remind one another of that occasionally, so it gets said sometime when Murgen is around to hear it.” Sahra never promised to spare Narayan’s ragged old hide. Maybe she could ambush him and take back that unfinished first Book of the Dead.
Swan pointed out, “That crow is still following us.”
A small but lofty fortification overlooked the bridge and ford from the south bank. The bird was up top watching us. It had not moved since our crossing. Maybe it wanted to rest its bones, too.
River whispered, “We still have one bamboo pole with crow-killing balls in it.”
“Leave it alone. It doesn’t seem to mean any harm. For now, anyway.” I was sure it had tried to communicate several times. “We can take it out if anything changes.”
At Ghoja we heard nothing but the traditional grumbling about those in charge. Rumors concerning events in Taglios seemed so exaggerated that no one believed a tenth of anything they heard. Later, after we reached Jaicur and were taking it easy for a while, the temper of rumor began to change. It now carried a subtle vibration suggesting the great spider at the heart of the web had begun to stir. It would be a long time before any concrete news caught up but the general consensus was that we should get going right now and not dawdle along the way.
Runmust discovered that a man answering Narayan’s description had been seen lurking in the vicinity of the shop operated by his now-pseudonymous offspring, Sugriva. “The man does have a weakness. Should we kill Sugriva while we’re here?”
“He’s never done anything to us.”
“His father did. It would be a reminder to him.”
“He doesn’t need reminding. If Narayan is so dim that he thinks we’re done with him now, let him. Just let me be there to see the look on his face when we catch him again.”
Narayan had stood out in Jaicur because the city was still very nearly a military encampment. People would remember us as well, if asked during the next few weeks.
I roamed around looking for my childhood a few times but nothing that I remembered, people or places, good or evil, remained. That past survived nowhere but within my mind. Which was the one place I wished that it could die.
56
The practical rules of Company field operations resemble those obeyed by stage magicians. We would prefer our audience saw nothing at all but we do realize that invisibility is impractical. So we try to show the watcher something other than what he is looking for. Thus the goats and donkeys. And, south of Jaicur, all new looks and identities for everybody, with the enlarged party breaking up into two independently traveling “families,” plus a group of failed southern fortune-hunters dragging home in despair and defeat after having had their spirits crushed by the Taglian experience. There were quite a few men of the latter sort around. They had to be watched. Many were not above taking advantage of weaker parties if they thought they could manage it. The roads were not patrolled anymore. The Protector did not care if they were safe.
Doj and Swan, Gota and I formed the advance party. We looked weak but that old man was worth four or five ordinary mortals. We had only one scrape. It was over in seconds. Several blood trails led off into the brush. Doj had chosen to leave no one dead.
The land became less hospitable and rose steadily. In clear air it was possible to look ahead and catch the faintest glimpse of the peaks of the Dandha Presh, still many days’ journey south of us. The paved road ended alongside an abandoned work camp. “They must’ve run out of prisoners,” Swan observed. The camp had been stripped of everything portable.
“What they ran out of is enemies Soulcatcher thought were worth an investment in a road. She could always find people she doesn’t like and use them up in an engineering project.” And she had done so on the western route, which was being followed by the rest of the Company. They would have paved footing all the way to Charandaprash. Their road, and the waterways serving it, had remained under construction until just a few years ago, when the Protector evidently decided the Kiaulune wars really were over, that it was not necessary to make life easy for the Great General and his men, and bullied the Radisha into no longer spending the money.
I wondered what the Radisha’s perspective would be. I suspected she had believed she was in charge right up to the moment we disappeared her. Then she had begun getting an education, here amongst her faithful subjects.
We reached Lake Tanji, which I love. The lake is a vast sprawl of icy indigo beauty. When I was a lot
